Pulled apart and extensively tweaked – replacement far-backgrounds in panels two and three followed by scaling (down) of Tantek and West in panel one and Tantek in panel three. Panel two has been built up to give Tantek some more headspace – all of this with an eye towards making enough room for the dialogue more than anything else. The backgrounds were quite the adventure – at this point in development, I was dropping in the linework and then painting to fill space, so anything behind a character was left as an unfinished smear. Creating more headspace for lettering worked swimmingly this time… I don’t know how well it will go with the next few pages.

Funny how I spend much less time on cleanup if i lay down the type first. Previous assembly has gone reassemble -> cleanup -> type. For this scene I’ve done reassemble -> type -> cleanup… and it feels like it’s moving faster. That or there’s just less in the way of cleanup work that needs to be done, after the backgrounds – optic divots, basic ink straightening, filling in a few gaps, etc. Simple.

Also visual continuity – pried off the plugs next to the ears. Like the optic vents, they’re never seen again after this scene. The plugs next to the eyes stay, as they do crop up again.

Mastering notes, 2016.12.06 – Minor dialogue adjustments.